Bazinga! Spicing Up Reading

To make our reading time a little more fun I have changed up how we read our weekly story. We work on the same story all week long. We follow the same routine every week as we are focusing on building our fluency.

Monday- Teacher reads the story or we listen to it on CD

Tuesday- We read the first half together- popcorn Style. Sometimes we do echo reading. 

Wednesday- We read the second half together-popcorn style

Thursday- We read the story with partners. 

Friday- Reread parts of the story needed for comprehension activities. 

We also have a weekly fluency story too. 

We all know the popcorn style. Everyone follows along as one person reads. When they are done reading they say popcorn and pick someone else to read right where they stopped. Well I have changed it slightly instead of saying "popcorn" we say "bazinga."

from http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhsq5xQjUy1qhjmiuo1_500.jpg

Inspired completely by my interest in The Big Bang Theory and one student coming up to me one day and saying "Penny, Penny, Penny." Sometimes it can be like the reader is tricking you if you aren't paying attention. Since my reading group is mostly struggling readers and some are still working on their confidence in reading, they have the options to read a few words, a sentence, a page or two. I am glad to say often more and more are choosing the page or more choice.

Since transforming popcorn to bazinga I have overheard students doing bazinga doing free reading time. Even in partner reading, one student saw how long their weekly fluency story was and told her partner "Well we are going to need a lot of bazingas for this one." I love it!

So remember...